


only ashes left

by supinetothestars



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Character Study, Flashbacks, Gaang (Avatar) Will Eventually Appear, Gen, Zuko (Avatar)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25434988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supinetothestars/pseuds/supinetothestars
Summary: When they were young, Azula and Zuko would sit in the upper rooms of the palace’s eastern wing, often with windows wide open to let in the chilly air, and across the wooden floors of various abandoned offices or halls they would sprawl out elaborate games of offense-and-defense. Plays of strategy, war, and betrayal - often with storylines more complex than the most onerous of their instructors’ many history scrolls. Each diligently carved toy came to have a name, a storyline, a motivation. They would fight over who got to play the marble Fire Nation soldiers and who had to play with the wooden Earth Kingdom figurines.That had been years ago. Now, as Zuko stands watching the courtyard fountain quietly burble away, it feels like centuries before. Had they really ever played toy soldiers in palace attics, been children miming the steps of war? Back then, before the war had found them, before they were juxtaposed into fighting at opposite ends of a very real conflict?[Or: Some things change, after the war. Zuko and Azula come to an understanding.]
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

Zuko’s first month as Fire Lord isn’t easy.

He is not a patient man. His inner wells of patience, if they ever existed, dried up long ago. And that first month -- the month of backstabbing advisors and assassins creeping in the night and trials upon tribulations the likes of which he’d, frankly, thought himself past - requires patience.

Something of which he has none.

It’s infuriating.

Now, fury - of that he has plenty. Gallons of it, tanks of it, a veritable flood brimming at his fingertips, scalding to the touch. In post-war meetings and political galas and dinners with dignitaries, the fury gathers and drips, drips, drips, slowly pooling in the pit of his stomach, simmering warmer with every backhanded remark or wry disrespect from the members of the court. The noblemen whisper behind his back; the noblewomen giggle. Their gazes, hot on his neck, follow him through balls and ceremonies and council meetings.

Drip, drip, drip. 

Old habit taps him on the shoulder and tells him to let the fury loose. But when has old habit gotten him anywhere? This is the palace, the crown of the nation and pride of the Fire Nation people. He cannot burn it to the ground. He cannot scream and rage and set the champagne flutes to steam the way he once had the seafoam on his warship’s deck, an eternity before. 

So when old habit tugs at his sleeves and urges him to let his fury reign, he pushes it aside. Lets the anger drain away gently, calmly, instead of scalding those around him as he once would have done. Patience is something he starts to teach himself, little by little.

It helps that there’s always someone by his side, the first month. Aang, playing the role of Avatar, savior of the nation, sweeping the snarky comments and vengeful glances aside, like smoke on the wind. Letting them wash over him, and off of him, as though they mean nothing. His cheer, his easy disposition, cannot be dissuaded. Sokka is there, sometimes, diverting the growing tenseness of the meetings with an ill-timed joke or a snarky comment. Katara, Toph, even Suki: at every turn, one of them is ready to stand at Zuko’s side. A united front.

It’s different. New. Takes getting used to, having allies within the red-and-gold trimmed halls of the palace. The last time he’d walked these corridors, it had been with his father’s gaze weighing him into the carpets.

His father’s gaze. Approving. Appreciative, even. Everything he’d thought he wanted. Funny, how the burning heat of Ozai’s eyes had left Zuko feeling ashamed no matter who it singed.

Ozai is gone, now, and the palace is lighter without him. Freer, with its looming walls feeling less like a prison court and more like something resembling a home. It’s not just Ozai’s absence that does it: it’s the way his friends’ voices are constantly echoing across the gardens, muffling the trickling of the fountains or the crackling torches in their sconces; the footsteps in the halls, the constant knowledge that they are there, by Zuko’s side, and he need only turn to find them. 

With their presence, the palace starts to feel like it’s truly his.

That doesn’t last.

The others leave after a month, and that doesn’t last.

It’s not their fault. Not anyone’s fault, really, just a necessary evil they all saw coming: they have homes, after all, and lives to lead. Katara and Sokka must travel south, Toph must visit her family, Suki has business to attend to, Aang has his role as the Avatar. Even Uncle, ever-present Uncle, takes his leave, returning to his tea shop in the Earth Kingdom. They will visit, travel, write. Aang most of all, in his duties as the Avatar.

But they cannot stay.

And so he is alone again. Alone in the palace, with his duties and responsibilities and his crown, weighing heavy on his head. Crowds of nobles to herd like rowdy sheepcats. The gardens are quiet, again, but for the torches in their sconces and the quiet fountains trickling in their bowls.

It’s fine for the first few days.  _ He’s _ fine. Still giddy from the farewell party, still hearing voices echoing in the corridors. And then, four days after, he has another meeting, a gathering with his advisors to discuss the handling of potential war reparations, and - 

It’s different. 

Smaller, for one thing. The chairs reserved for the Avatar and for the Water Tribe ambassadors have been tucked away. It makes the table seem longer, somehow. Makes Zuko seem smaller.

It’s less cheery. Aang knew how to stay on topic in a meeting, usually, but he also was a master at diffusing tension. The same tension that tends to mount in a room like this, surrounded by red-hot torches and arching pillars and a dozen old men with a dozen different agendas waiting for Zuko to slip up. To prove to them he’s unfit to rule, he’s not powerful enough, not stern enough. Every step he takes risks stepping in a beartrap. It sends a prickling unease across Zuko’s neck, and air starts to feel hard to come by.

He stumbles into the courtyard as soon as the meeting’s over. Leans against a shaded wall. He

pulls the sweet, cold air into his lungs, savors the lily-scented aroma of the flower patches edging the grass, and feels as though he could get drunk on the sweet scent of the open garden.

His gaze lands on the fountain in the center of the courtyard. It dips low into the ground, at the center of a black brick pathway that cuts through the grass. It sparkles in the sunlight, crystal waters cascading within the dark paved pool. 

The sight of it triggers a rush of memories. 

Azula and her friends used to play by that fountain, as children; tumbling through the grass and giggling all through the summer months, when the heat of the torches made the interior of the palace practically unbearable. It had made Zuko painfully jealous. He had hardly had any friends, himself - Ozai had wanted him to focus on his training. 

Azula had seemed cruel, even then. She’d run her possy of girls more like a ringmaster than a friend - ordering them about like soldiers, even going so far as to often arrange elaborate games of war, twisting games like hide-and-explode into parodies of battlefront strategy that often ended with very real consequences as one or another girl got injured in a mock battle taken too far. Ozai, when he heard of these incidents, would quiz Azula on her strategy over dinner: had she taken the offensive, or focused on defense? Had she focused her efforts on the points where it mattered, jabbing at the weak spots of the enemy defense? How had she spent her most valuable soldiers?

But Azula’s possy couldn’t stay year-long, of course, and come winter they would usually retreat back to their homes and families, taking up their duties as heirs of the noble estates. And Azula would be alone, again, with neither ally nor enemy in her games of war.

That didn’t suit her. That didn’t suit her one bit. So when Zuko got out of his firebending training each day - often exhausted, scraped or burned or otherwise injured by firebending teachers pushed stricter and stricter by Ozai’s watchful gaze - she would be waiting, often with handfuls of carved marble toy soldiers and maps, or wooden strategy board games.

They’d sit in the upper rooms of the palace’s eastern wing, often with windows wide open to let in the chilly air, and across the wooden floors of various abandoned offices or halls they would sprawl out elaborate games of offense-and-defense. Plays of strategy, war, and betrayal - often with storylines more complex than the most onerous of their instructors’ many history scrolls. Each uniquely carved marble soldier came to have a name, a storyline, a motivation. They would fight over who got to play the Fire Nation and who had to play with the brown-carved Earth Kingdom figurines.

Azula always broke the rules. There wasn’t exactly a list of them, but they were understood - there was a certain  _ way _ you played at battle, and she always broke it. She’d distract him with a war on the western front then claim one of his soldiers was secretly an undercover assassin sent to kill the king. “He slit your ruler’s throat right in the throne room,” she’d boast, snatching away his kingpiece against all protestations. “He’s bleeding out all over the floor.”

Opposing this tyranny was pointless, Zuko quickly learned. It was her game, and she would draw it out as she saw fit. He was only there to play the opposition.

This tradition only lasted a few winters before they both outgrew it. There was a real war on, after all, and real work to be done with it: training, studying, practicing firebending out in the training fields. Ozai’s patience for Azula’s games of war faded as soon as she became old enough to study the real strategy being employed by Fire Nation generals on the warfront. Better she practice waging war with her tutors, than in the palace courtyards. As his encouragement faded, so did her enthusiasm: there were better things to be doing, she came to agree.

That had been years ago. Now, as Zuko stands watching the courtyard fountain quietly burble away, it feels like centuries before. Had they really ever played toy soldiers in palace attics, been children miming the steps of war? Back then, before the war had found them, before they were juxtaposed into fighting at opposite ends of a very real conflict? 

The thought makes the air feel colder. Zuko shivers despite himself.

The sun begins to set. He turns away, stepping over a patch of orchids.

And a part of him wonders when things changed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what is atla continuity rlly?? because i don't know and i probably fucked up canon real bad here 
> 
> anyway pls leave comments for me to slurp up like the loch ness monster eating eels like spaghetti


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula looks peaceful when Zuko enters. Calm, even. She’s sprawled on her back across a plain, white-sheeted bed, toying with a wisp of flame cupped in her palm, and as Zuko enters, she snaps her hands shut, extinguishing it with a fwwp, and sits up.

“We have a problem.” 

Zuko is tired of problems. Zuko is tired, period. His head is still bleary with morning fog and his thoughts are a jumbled mess. His head of palace staff, a spindly man named Rin who’s known Zuko since he was a child and doesn’t pull any punches, does not appear to care.

“Rin,” Zuko growls, letting his head fall forward onto his desk and fighting back a note of fury from his voice - he’s been making an effort to not yell so often, lest he lose his voice and palace staff in one go - “I’m  _ busy _ , as you can see _ , _ so can this  _ please _ wait?”

“You asked that I inform you immediately on any issues regarding Princess Azula, your majesty,” Rin says, disapproval edging the creases in his voice.

Zuko sits up so fast he nearly tips over his chair and wobbles for a long precarious moment. He pins Rin with a stare. “What? Azula? What did she do?”

Zuko hasn’t spoken to Azula in a month. She’s held in enclosed quarters just on the edge of the palace complex, with a small staff of guards to keep her in place and a psychiatrist Zuko had hired in hopes of pulling her back from the insanity she’d hinged on the day of the Agni Kai. Zuko was supposed to receive monthly updates, but the first one has yet to be delivered.

“Her psychiatrist is threatening to resign, your Majesty,” Rin says. “Apparently she burned his wrist yesterday and sent a fireball after him when he attempted to bring her food. No one else is willing to enter her quarters, and they don’t know how to pacify her.”

Zuko grits his teeth.

Typical.

~~~

Azula looks peaceful when Zuko enters. Calm, even. She’s sprawled on her back across a plain, white-sheeted bed, toying with a wisp of flame cupped in her palm, and as Zuko enters, she snaps her hands shut, extinguishing it with a  _ fwwp _ , and sits up.

He closes the iron door behind him and hears the guard lock it with a click. His entire body is tense, fists clenched on the food tray, half waiting for the sting of lightning, for the searing and horribly familiar pain of fire.

It doesn’t come. 

Azula stares at him, gold-brown eyes running over him from below dark eyebrows, and a smirk crawls onto her face. A quiet laugh. She looks different. Paler, almost ghostlike, and less muscular; a month without combat has left her less drawn. 

The most startling difference is her hair. It’s short, falling in ragged, uneven clumps down to her cheekbone. The tips are frayed and thin, obviously burnt, as though she severed it by setting it aflame. It gives her a wild look, almost unhinged at first glance - but Zuko remembers all too clearly how Azula looks when she’s gone mad, and this calm, collected, almost amused teenage girl sitting before him is a far cry from the rabid beast who’d lept at Katara during their Agni Kai.

“Zuzu,” she says, and her smile is only barely a smirk. “How interesting, you visiting me  _ now _ , after a month of silence. One would almost think you were afraid.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me,” he says, mouth gone dry.

They’re both right. Zuko had been terrified at the thought of visiting to find Azula still cold, disdainful; almost worse than the idea of her leaping at his throat was the thought she might not care either way - that all the time spent wondering what went wrong went unreciprocated. 

Azula sniffs. “Better you than that blundering old fool of a  _ psychiatrist _ you keep sending. I swear to god I’ll singe his hair off too one of these days if he doesn’t shut  _ up _ .”

“So that was on purpose,” Zuko says. She gives him a familiar look of disdain, like she can’t believe he’d ever suggest otherwise.

“Of course it was  _ on purpose _ , Zuzu, one doesn’t just  _ burn all their hair off _ \- oh, don’t look at me like that. So kind of you to be concerned but I’ve been reliably informed it grows back. Now hand me that food before I electrocute you,  _ your Majesty _ ,” she commands, mockery dripping from her voice.

Zuko hadn’t realized he’d been looking concerned, but he steps closer to the bed anyways, tentatively holding out the tray of noodles. Azula sits up and pries it from his hands, setting it on her lap. 

“You have to stop scaring your psychiatrist,” Zuko begins, after a long moment. “That’s why I came to talk to you. They had to treat him for burns on his wrist.”

Azula scoffs, setting down her chopsticks. “Oh, please. I hardly sparked him. Least I could do. The man should have had better sense than to poke a rabid dog.”

“He was doing his  _ job _ , Azula,” Zuko growls, unable to help a familiar note of confrontation from sneaking into his voice. “Would you rather I left you to rot down here? With no one to talk with? I’ve seen what that  _ does _ to people. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, not even my own sister.”

Azula shows a feral grin that hinges on a snarl. “Such a  _ saint _ , Zuzu. Acting like you’re above leaving me to rot. Stop with the therapists. I’m not a mental case.”

“You were hardly stable last time we talked, Azula,” Zuko snaps. “I’m trying to help you. Maybe take it as a favor and leave it be rather than prodding at my boundaries yet again.”

There’s a beat of silence and then Azula sighs. “Oh, Zuko. I forgot how infuriating you are when you try to be kind, but it’s good to see you back in character, I suppose.”

Zuko blinks. “Back in character? This isn’t-” He’d been trying to act  _ out _ of character, since he became Fire Lord - less fury and more reasonable mercy. 

“Yes, yes, you’ve got over the all the ugly brooding since you betrayed the Fire Nation,” Azula drawls. “Less angry-yelly and more like the old you. All well-meaning idiocy and blithe naivete.”

Trying to understand her, Zuko feels like he’s trying to see through a warped window. “What are you talking about? ‘Old’ me? I was always - ‘ _ angry yelly’,  _ or whatever you called it. For years, on the warship-”

She waves that aside. “Oh, sure, you went through an emo phase. We all do, self excluded. But that was just a  _ phase,  _ Zuko, and before Dad got his hands on you and twisted all your cogs you were much more passive. Calm, even. Made you ever so fun to mess with.”

The imagery that evokes.  _ Before Dad got his hands on you and twisted all your cogs _ \- Zuko’s skin prickles, cold and uncomfortable, and the air in the room begins to feel chillier. Azula’s smile is glinting in the light from the sconces, and Zuko feels an overpowering urge to change the subject. 

“Your hair,” he says. “Why’d you burn it?”

“You’re very fixated on my hair, Zuzu.”

“I want to know,” Zuko says. He doesn’t know why, but it’s true: he wants, desperately, to understand. Her hair is just the tip of the iceberg. Nothing she’s said in this conversation feels quite right, feels quite connected to the madwoman who’d attacked Katara a month before. She seems calmer now, collected, the only hint of her former desperation for the throne a glint of steel in her smile.

“Good,” Azula says. “There’s two things I have on you.”

He blinks. “What?”

“My hair, and for me to stop burning my psychiatrist,” Azula says. “Tell you what. I’ll play nice with my psychiatrist and I’ll tell you why I burnt my hair on one condition.”

Zuko steels himself for her to ask for, at best, a weekly human sacrifice, and at worst, the throne of the Fire Nation.

“You have to beat me at Pai Sho,” Azula finishes, and gives him a smug smile. “We play twice a week, and we’re not done till you win a game.”

Zuko stares. “ _ Pai Sho _ ,” he repeats, incredulous. “You want me to play a  _ board game _ with you? Twice a  _ week _ ? I-  _ Why?” _

“Would you believe me if I said I missed my darling brother dearest?”

“No.”

Azula smirks. “Then let’s say I miss hearing how things are going, in the palace. Or perhaps I’m tired of my psychiatrist treating me like glass. Or perhaps I plan to crack you upside the head with the pai sho board and make a run for it. Let’s say you beat me and I’ll tell you.”

Zuko closes his mouth. Swallows. 

“Okay,” Zuko says. “Deal.”

What’s the worst that could happen?

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway i don't really like this chapter n m sorry but cramps are a bitch and i don't have the headspace to edit in some actual description bc ow but uh pls leave comments to ease my misery


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